They held the touch – Kov could not say how long, for his sense of time's passage was oddly affected by the physical contact. Then he felt a growing impulse to deepen the touch, to move his fingertips slightly up Koss' fingers. At first, he resisted it in the manner he had been taught to suppress all emotional response in order to allow space for thought.
"You are suppressing your desires, Kov." It was soft but shaded with meanings Kov didn't understand.
He said nothing. He wouldn't deny it, not when Koss had more than once expressed displeasure with his previous untruths. But he could not precisely confirm it; he had not the words to explain and knew not whether Koss would accept the touch.
The silence expanded between them. Kov could not look into the other's eyes; the intimacy of such an action, while he yearned for the touch, was beyond bearing.
"Whatever it is you desire, Kov, I will allow you."
"You know not what I would have of you."
"In this moment, it is of no concern. I wish to share it."
"That is illogical, Koss."
"Perhaps. Or perhaps not. It may be that my motivation makes it logical to indulge your desires."
Kov considered Koss' words, and the impulse which would not be subdued. Koss had allowed this much. No, he had initiated it, asked for it, and brought them to this place to explore it. He had suggested there was more he would like to share than this. He had prepared the water ceremony and directed the sharing that placed their lips in the same positions.
He could wait no longer.
He would wait no longer.
Kov released the hold on his fingers, and they trembled away from the tips of Koss', eliciting a soft protest sound his companion didn't restrain – a sound that shifted as Kov's fingertips moved slowly over Koss' nails.
It was all he dared, and it brought sensations he'd never known. He shivered with them, with the newness and the pleasure of them.
"How –" Koss' voice seemed uncertain. "How do you know of the ouz'hesta, Kov?"
"Ouz'hesta?" It was an old word, but not one originated within his clan, and Kov knew it not. "I don't know of it."
"You perform it well."
"I don't understand."
"May I?" Koss' fingers twitched slightly beneath his own; Kov had an impression he wanted to move them.
Kov was uncertain he could tolerate such an action, but Koss had allowed him. He would learn what he could of this touching, that he might understand why the other's scent drew him where T'Sia's brought nausea.
"You may." He didn't know what it was he agreed to, but he had come here, and it would be illogical to refuse whatever learning there could be in it. However, logic was not the reason he would choose to accept Koss.
He was uncertain precisely what was.
But his body shuddered, eager for … something he couldn't know, or name.
Koss' fingers slipped from beneath his own, and now it was Kov's voice that emerged in a protesting sound, though he had intended no such thing.
He wanted the touch of those fingers.
He wanted far more than that.
He wanted things he couldn't begin to understand, and he wanted them with Koss, and Koss alone.
There was perhaps some form of danger in that –
But then Koss' fingertips connected with his nails, and every other thought vanished in the wave of building pleasure.
He wanted more. His breath left him in another moaning sound, and he couldn't find it again. If he never did, he would die still wondering at what this meant, and where it might mean.
Koss' touch moved upward, to the place where his nails met the skin at their bases and paused. Those two points of contact seemed to be aflame in some strange way that brought searing awareness, not pain.
A strange thought of T'Pol, Koss' Promised, who had dared to touch the flame. Was this why? What had she felt? Something akin to this longing hunger, this promise that there was more, so much more, to be explored?
"There is far more, Kov. This is only the beginning of the ouz'hesta. It can be … so much more than this. So very much more."
"I would learn it –" Did he dare to say the rest?
Did he dare not to?
"I would learn it all, Koss. All that you can teach me, and all that we might learn together. Wherever it will lead, I would learn it."
"Such words…." Koss breathed out the response, then inhaled quickly through his mouth, his tongue emerging for a moment to taste the air. "Such words are all I have longed to hear, since I first scented you upon the air."
"Help me to learn," Kov said, and tasted the air as well.
"Follow your impulses, Kov. Only that. Follow your impulses, and they will lead you to a sharing nearly as old as our species. Follow them, and you will learn what an ouz'hesta can be."
Kov closed his eyes. He wanted to feel … whatever they might feel together. Impulse – or perhaps something deeper, something instinctual, something hungry and insistent. It told him to move his fingers again, taking them from beneath Koss'. Slowly – there was no need to hurry, for T'Khut was only now appearing in the high window over the sleeping platform. Many hours awaited before dawning, and the day that followed was a rest day. If Koss would remain here, and allow him to remain, as well –
"As long as you wish, Kov. I will remain with you as long as you wish."
This was the second time he had seemed to know what Kov was thinking without him speaking to it. "I would learn more of this," he said, and wondered if Koss could understand what he intended.
"Whatever you wish to learn, I will help you as I am able, Kov. Whether it is a thing you share only with me, or carry forward into your life, and we never share it again. I will cherish this time, and this learning shared together."
"Koss…" But there was nothing else he could say. Instead, Kov allowed his fingertips to speak for him, moving to the place where Koss' had rested upon his own, then, tentatively, slightly further, to the first knuckle.
"Feel, Kov. Allow yourself to feel, and to know what it is to be Vulcan."
Kov's eyes opened, and Koss was there, leaning in to watch him, eyes intent upon his face, as though there was something that he could learn or read there.
"Feel, Kov. Only that. Feel, and do what you will."
Feeling, Kov allowed his awareness to settle into his fingertips. Koss' bioelectric pulses, and his own, and the music they made, surged and flowed between them, through him. It was consuming – and Kov allowed himself to be consumed, as though he was fuel for this music, and nothing more.
Perhaps he was.
But he cared not. The music was all, and all he wanted.
The music, and the man with whom he could make it.
He sank into those two points of awareness and let the rest of existence recede. It was of no consequence, here.
A soft whisper … a desire to match his own. Yearning – but with a greater understanding of what it was that he yearned for.
Koss had knowledge that Kov lacked, and Kov wanted to share this knowledge. He wanted to understand, to know why it was that he was so eager for this, when he could remember never having felt that way for anything in his life.
"The knowing is here, Kov. But I can't simply give it. You must seek it, and find it, on your own."
There was … an opening. In some manner Kos found it through the touch. It was a place where Koss' mind was porous, opening to him.
"How can I feel this?"
"Have you never sensed another with your touch, Kov?"
"With my touch? No … none other than T'Sia, when we were Promised. But the priest conducted the opening. I did nothing beyond touch my fingertips to hers, and she hers to mine."
"If you could feel so much as a child, Kov. If you could feel it then – it is possible that there is so much more you may be able to sense now. If you open yourself, it is possible. You must become porous. Porous, as I am. Open slowly, without focus. As the flowers open after the moist times, so too can we open, one to the other, and in that is the beginning of sharing between us. Never and always touching and touched."
"Never and always touching and touched?" Those were the words spoken by the priest at the Promising, words Kov had thought to be nothing more than a part of the ceremony intended to give it importance, to make it a matter of memory the children would not forget, when the time of the Burning came, and they had the need.
"Just so, Kov. They are more than simply words. More than a ceremony alone. They are words of truth. A Promise to all our people. I have no proof of this, but it is what I most deeply believe." Soft, so soft, almost as though the other man was speaking to himself.
"Never and always touching and touched." Yes. There was something in it which held a deeper truth, one that was meant for this sharing, and where it might lead.
There was something in the touching, in the music made by their bioelectric pulses, by the porous sensing of Kov. It could lead to – more. More than he knew, in this moment.
But he could learn. As the flowers opened after the moist times. That is what Koss had said. Kov felt the touch, and let his fingers drift along Koss' knuckles, as the desert breeze had, this dawning.
Koss' breath sighed like a breeze. He was porous, awaiting the touch. Kov wanted to reach for him, the way the infant T'Pol had dared to touch the flame. But this was not the way. He was certain of that; he could feel it.
Not for him the daring that would push forward. His daring was simply to open himself, to be as the blossom after the moist times. That, and nothing more.
Kov had been on the desert to see the flowers opening only once, at his Promising to T'Sia. But he remembered. The scent of them, unlike anything else he had ever smelled, as Koss' scent was unlike. He had wanted to go to explore. To touch and study the blossoms, and learn them, so he could carry the knowledge of them from this place.
But there had been no freedom to do so. He was bound by tradition, and by the needs of the many. The desires of the one had been outweighed. Even at seven years, he understood the precept well enough not to voice his wish to explore the flowers.
Koss sighed softly, and the feel of it was as a breeze shaking the blooms. "I have the memory of it, Kov. Did you never return to fulfill the wish?"
"Not until this day, Koss. This day, I have returned, and I will explore the blooms in all their fulness. I will come to know them well enough that they are a part of my being."
"Never and always touching and touched." Koss said it softly, and now his fingers were moving again. This time, Kov held himself still, waiting, as the bloom opened after the moist time. Koss was the light of Eridani 4o, and the light of T'Khut. He was life, in this moment.
A slight thought that there was nothing logical or Vulcan in this.
And yet, it felt more natural than any other thing in his life had been.
Koss' fingers made their journey in a slow, enticing manner, circling his, and rising just past the point where he had ceased his last touch. Awareness intensified, bringing stronger tremors. "This is the ouz'hesta," Koss said, his voice treating the word as a cherished thing. "It is the beginning of sharing between two who would seek to grow closer in mind. As we touch, we learn the other." He breathed a trembling breath. "I had never thought to take pleasure in this form of touch and learning, Kov."
Koss' advance halted, his fingertips warm and alive against Kov's skin. Kov felt more than heard the question the other man didn't ask: "Do you also take pleasure in this form of touch and learning?"
It would be a simple matter to answer in words, to let them speak for him as he always had. It would be what was expected.
But what was there in this moment, this night beneath T'Khut's growing light, that was expected? Why should he use his voice, when there was another language they were learning here, one of touch alone?
He began to move his fingers again, even more slowly, focusing this time on every sensation, opening like the blossom, so that Koss might discover the answer for himself if he chose, and if he was able to sense it. He longed to give him the fulness of the sensations, and the emotions they roused in him, emotions for which he had no name, but which were perhaps more real than any he had felt. More than all else, he wanted Koss to have that – the knowing that, for him, there was nothing that had ever resonated so harmoniously with all that he was than this form of touching shared with Koss.
But could Koss sense it? Kov had no understanding of how to give what it was he wanted to share, beyond some deep impulse.
Koss gasped and his fingers beneath Kov's touch shook strongly. "You….desire…."
Yes. That was it, precisely. The emotion for which Kov had had no word was desire.
"I desire you, Koss. As I have never desired anyone or anything, I desire you. To learn you to the last thought, the last feeling, the last cell. I have never desired any other so – not even T'Sia my Promised. Only you, Koss."
Koss trembled beneath him. He said nothing as Kov's fingers teased his knuckle, then explored higher. But there was no need for words here, either, though Kov had never attempted this type of sharing before.
Koss' answer was in his accelerated breathing, the coppery flush of color, his eyes that watched the movement of Kov's fingers over his own. This was as new for him.
They were not intended to feel this for one another.
They were too young by several years to be feeling it at all, if those who had had the charge to teach Kov about such things were to be believed.
He had never before had cause to doubt them.
But he had never before touched another in this fashion and felt what music they made together.
"We are Awakening. To one another, and not to those to whom we are Promised." Kov said it as a theory. He was uncertain whether he wished Koss to refute it.
"You are Awakening, Kov." Soft, so soft, akin to a silverbird's feather floating upon a desert thermal. "I am Awakened. Since the day I first scented you, I have been Awakened to you."
"Six days? And you spoke not to it, nor to me?"
"I didn't know whether you would choose to have the knowledge of my condition, Kov. For some, there is a shame in it. For me, there is not. Kaiidth. What is, is. I am Awakened to you and have no desire now for any other."
"And if I had not come to you this dawning? If your scent had not drawn me to you? What then, Koss?" Kov ceased just below the second knuckle, and the other man made a soft sound Kov now understood was desire.
"Then I would have remained silent on the matter and lived my life. I would not be the first among our people who has done so. The needs of the many outweigh the desires of the one."
Kov didn't respond, but he couldn't see how silence benefited either the many or the one. It was not unknown for men or women to be drawn not to their opposite gender, but their own. It was less than common, but more than infrequent. There were provisions in the Promising to allow for such occurrences – it was one of the reasons for the Challenge. T'Sia and T'Pol could be notified and given the chance to choose a champion more in keeping with their needs.
There would be no shame in it. It would be a logical solution that benefited all and added to a stable culture.
But he mentioned none of this. There was something he was sensing within Koss. Something that would resist his attempts to direct the course of this desire.
He sat silently, and closed his eyes again, awaiting Koss' next touch.
But it didn't come.